A month later:

I started writing this one a month ago. It is a longer version of the sermon I gave just after May’s board meeting. I wanted to get the language just right (write?). Which is funny because the portion is called, Emor, about speaking/saying.

I just want to look at one verse. This congregation took a big step forward this week, with a historic vote and you should be applauded for it. Our bylaws now state that someone can be a member who is married to a Jew. It means that person can vote. It means that person can serve on the board, not as president or vice president, or on a committee who isn’t Jewish. So to our new members, “Bruchim Ha’baim, Blessings of Welcome.”

This is a big deal. It is not true in every Jewish congregation. It does put us in line with both the national Conservative Movement’s Men Club bylaws as well as the Women’s League bylaws. Some of those changes reflect the numbers that we already know but that were concretized by the Pew Study.

One of the things that was asked during the congregational meeting is what do we call ourselves if non-Jews are allowed to be members? The answer is a synagogue. Which, by the way is a Greek word, showing the assimilation of that day. Or maybe a shul, meaning school in German and Yiddish, showing again some assimilation. Maybe Beit Knesset might be the even better term, meaning House of Assembly and reflects our own congregation’s name. But that is another sermon.

But in this question I hear the hint of superiority. The “We’re better than everyone else.” And that scares me. We may be the chosen people. We are special, unique, holy. But that doesn’t mean we need to be holier than thou. So what does choseness mean? The conversation was rich and varied, as you might expect for a congregation that embraces diversity. And we are better for that range of opinion.

We are a light to the nations, an am kadosh, a holy people. A treasured people amongst all the nations on the face of the earth. (Deut 14). It is a central concept throughout the Bible, Talmud, philosophical, mystical and even contemporary literature. And sometimes it is used against us.

So what does choseness mean? Chosen for what? Some see it as Israel becoming the bride, with the encounter with God as Sinai as the wedding and the mountain itself as the chuppah, and the Torah as the dowry or the ketubah. We will have the opportunity to experience this as we celebrate Shavuot in a few weeks. The rabbis of Tzefat actually wrote a ketubah which we will read.

Another midrash teaches us that G-d offered the Torah to all the other nations first. Each one objected to one commandment or another. One nation objected to not stealing. Another to not murdering. Only Israel was willing to do them. (Midrash Sifrei Deuteronomy 33:2)

Another midrash (Shabbat 88a) tells us that the Israelites took their places at the foot [or, on the underside] of the mountain (Exodus 19:17).  Rav Avdimi the son of Hama the son of Hasa said, “This teaches that the Holy One, lowered the [detached] mountain over them like a vat and said to them, ‘If you accept the Torah, fine; but if not, there will be your grave.’”

All the people answered the call to Torah together as one. Midrash teaches us that we all stood at Sinai, men, women and children, even those yet unborn, even us today. Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotsk explained that not all commandments can be understood until they are performed or done. By doing we come to understand and to hear.

Another midrash teaches that G-d wanted sureties that if given the Torah we would obey. At first the Israelites said that our ancestors would be our guarantors, then they tried the prophets. Finally when the Israelites said that our children would be our guarantors, G-d gave the Torah. (Midrash Rabba, Song of Songs 1:4)

Because Israel was given the Torah, it seems that God holds us to higher standard. “You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth. That is why I call you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2).

I studied this very topic with our Chai School students this year. If we are the chosen people, what happens to the rest of the nations? Two thousand years ago this was also a debate. The Talmud teaches us that the “righteous of all nations will have a share in the world to come.” (Sandhedrin 8b). Is this an apparent contradiction?

What the class decided is that when it says we are to be a light to the nations what that means is that we are to be teachers. And part of what we teach is how to be mensches, how to be good people. One way of doing that is to make G-d known in the world.

So we were chosen to receive the Torah, under some duress, and we were chosen to be teachers. OK—we can live with that. No superiority there. We can be rpud of the idea that Abraham gave the world the idea of monotheism, the belief in only one God.

And that’s where the verse from Micah that we will study at Shavuot fits in. Just after the famous verse, “Everyone ‘neath their vine and fig tree shall live and peace and unafraid. And into plowshares beat their swords. Nation shall learn war no more,” we are told, “For let all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” (Micah 4:4-6). What does that we mean? Just us? Us and them? Somehow together? The Hebrew isn’t clear. For me, however, it is a clarion call for tolerance. And more than tolerance. Acceptance. Peace. Wholeness.

This sense mirrors our own vision statement that says that we embrace diversity. It is a both/and. Jews were chosen to receive the Torah. We affirm that in our most basic blessings including the blessing over the Torah, which says that God has chosen us amongst all peoples. So at CKI aliyot will be reserved for Jews alone. Non-Jewish parents of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah student will be welcome to stand behind or next to their Jewish spouse. There are other prayers that they can recite to reflect their joy of reaching that moment.

And while this is a historic moment at CKI, it is not new to Judaism. At the congregational meeting I said that all the way back when we left Egypt we were a “mixed multitude.” It seems there has always been room for these “fellow travelers.”

In this week’s Torah portion, it says “When any man of the house of Israel or of the strangers in Israel presents a burnt offering as his offering…it must be acceptable.”

Non-Jews, the “strangers amongst us”, offered sacrifices at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. And it was acceptable. It was even welcomed. The ger, the word we use today to mean convert, really meant something closer to resident alien, or the stranger among us. This was the person who chose to live among the Israelites. Because Israelites were strangers in a strange land, Egypt, we understood the plight of the ger. 36 times in the Torah, as I have often said, we are to welcome the stranger amongst us. In fact, one rabbi argued with me that even calling such people strangers is not fair to them. These are the people who choose to be with us. So in that Holy Temple, there was a men’s court, a women’s court, the priest’s court and the one for the gerim.

Perhaps one of my Bar Mitzvah students is right. God chose us and we choose God. Debbie Friedman sings of this in her song “613 Commandments. “Had we not made a promise to be chosen and to choose…”

At some level in this day, we are all Jews by Choice. There is so much that competes for our time and attention it would be very easy to opt out or to actively choose another way. Yet we don’t. We are here. And we are here to stay. This vote makes it much more possible.

But what about those who choose to be among us? That actively become Jews? Rabbinic Jewish law is clear—When a proselyte comes to be converted one receives him with an open hand so as to bring him under the wings of the divine presence (Lev. Rabbah 2:9). This is the opposite from the custom of pushing someone away three times. That’s not very warm and welcoming, is it?

The ger is expected to follow the laws incumbent upon native born Israelites and there is only one standard for both ritual and ethical laws. This will be different from Christianity, in which, Paul trying to make it easier for converts, says that there is one law for the Jews and one law for the Gentiles and that those converting in do not need circumcision or kashrut.

In fact, quite the contrary is true—if a ger wanted to eat of the Passover sacrifice, he and all the males of his household must be circumcised. This requirement became the basis of centuries of Jewish halacha when circumcision is required for conversation, (BT Yev 46b)

Sometimes I think we make this all too complicated. It seems we can easily get lost in the minutia. And I am not sure that is what G-d wants. The often told story of Hillel and Shammai bears repeating here.

It happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, ‘Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.’ Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder’s cubit which was in his hand.12  When he went before Hillel, he said to him, ‘What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor.  That is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary; go and study it.’ Shabbat 31a

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t hold a grudge. Welcome the stranger, the widow, the orphan. I am proud to serve CKI as we continue to live out our vision statement and be a welcoming place for all.